I-D-E-N-T-I-T-Y
by apocalyvse
Summary: After four days stuck in containment, Eliza makes a discovery about zombies. (a companion piece for Z1, set after the homecoming game)
1. PART 1

It's been four days since the football game that went terribly, horribly wrong. Four days since Zed put his Z-band's software through the virtual garbage disposal, and four days since she looked back at a booing, hateful crowd and spotted her computer in the hands of the Aceys.

Four days. Eliza's still pretty mad about it.

She's had a lot of time to think in those days, sitting here alone in what is basically a prison cell. Plenty of hours to lie there and stew on it, to stare at Zed next door and ruminate on all the things that have led them here. To look over and see how Bonzo's going with the piece of art he's trying to scratch into the wall of his cell with a loose button from his jacket.

Bonzo's holding up alright at least, over there opposite them just calmly doing the same thing he always does. She's fuming, and plotting, but she'll get past it eventually, when she has the time and space to scream at a few people. But Zed…

Despite what the humans might assume, there aren't many zombies in Zombietown that have been offline since the Z-bands were introduced. Full zombies wandering around hunting for brains are rare these days, between the Z-bands and the propensity of the Zombie Patrol to arrest anyone that looked even vaguely threatening. Even an Unstable reading, like the one Zed has been hovering at for months now, doesn't create a problem very often – any good knock to a Z-band can cause it, sure, but an unstable zombie still has most of their cognitive functions, and a second good whack usually jolts the band back to online.

The point being; Eliza had never seen a zombie before this week. She'd seen the uncertain crouch and black veins of Unstable – hell, she'd been there herself a few times, trying to fight off the rush of adrenaline and the distinct, clawing hunger that cramps your stomach the moment the band turns off, craving one thing only. But she'd never seen a real, brains-eating zombie before the football game, before Zed handed their lives over to some stupid cheerleaders.

And now the only zombie she's ever seen is her best friend, the one person she'd never even bothered to _imagine_ like that because he's so zombie in the _other_ way, the alive way. Zed is supposed to be the life of Zombietown, not the death of it.

She'll never forget what he looked like. _Looks_ like. She'd seen it at the pep rally, when he'd just about smashed his Z-band apart on a bleacher and destabilised himself – the black of his veins bulging from his skin, the red of his eyes deepening and intensifying, his fingers curling into claws and his lips struggling to pull back into a snarl. He'd only been a little worse when he went offline for real, only a little more zombie than she'd ever set him at herself. The stark difference had been his eyes; there was fear there still, at the pep rally, the ability to look down and read the flashing screen of the Z-band and know just how close to offline he was. Once the Acey had their way, there was nothing, just a blank stare, fixed on whatever prey he thought was closest.

Eliza lies back and stares at the ceiling, for lack of a better place to put her eyes.

She should be angry at him. And she is, she'd screamed at him for most of her first day here, even though he wasn't listening. The hot anger she'd felt was the remnants of the zombie she'd become, she thinks now, the gnawing, insatiable hunger of the mindless beast finding an outlet, when her Z-band had tried to tamp it down. She feels none of that rage now, just a hollow emptiness, a gut-wrenching anxiety that she might have to live in here forever now, that the Aceys have sentenced them to death, that Zed-

She can hear a faint knocking from the hall and sits up, looking through the door. The whole front wall of Zombie Containment's cells is made of thick plastic, sturdy enough to keep them in but transparent so that the humans can study them as they walk past. So that they can watch each other slowly go mad, just barely out of earshot of each other. There's no hiding here.

Bonzo stands at the front of his cell, hands pressed up against the wall. He's looking between her and Zed uncertainly. When he sees he has her attention, he starts talking – she can see his mouth moving, his lips forming words in their mother tongue, but she can't hear any of it. She gestures to her ear and shrugs, to let him know she has no idea what he's saying. He points to Zed. And then again, more insistent.

Eliza doesn't want to turn around. She doesn't want to see what they've done – the humans, the Aceys, _her_. She's had four days to think about it and she's decided that if they aren't taking Zed home with them, she doesn't want to remember what he looked like in here. She's trying, instead, to remember their last Zombie Mash, to commit to her memory the way his voice had sounded as he shouted something to her over the sound of the music, and the steps to the dance he'd pulled out to impress that cheerleader he likes so much. But then Bonzo beats his fist against the wall again, and points more urgently, and she knows she will have to look, or she's only going to upset him too.

She turns around slowly, almost afraid of what she might find. He's gone through about every stage of bloodthirsty monster by now – unbridled rage, throwing himself against the walls, sobbing in a corner, screeching at every human that walks past. Dead eyed, pained, suffering. He's been pacing for the last day or so, beating a path into the dark concrete floor with his feet, and even that is maddening to watch because he just doesn't _stop, _just keeps walking around and around, waiting for it to kill him.

The wall between them is solid brick and mortar, but it has a long window so that they can always see each other, even if they can't touch or talk. It's like they're caged animals, given just enough social interaction that they won't go insane. The only person Eliza has had any interaction with over the past few days is Bonzo (and the humans that come, to check vitals and ask questions, but they aren't people. They are monsters). Zed hasn't acknowledged either of them, or anything he doesn't want to eat. Eliza isn't expecting him to when she looks now either – she just hopes he is still alive, not trying to hurt himself like he had a few days ago.

She is surprised, when she finally finds the courage to look at the window, to find Zed standing at the glass, staring at her. She almost jumps in surprise, but she's Eliza and she doesn't jump at anything, so she stands and stares instead.

It's not Zed, not really. It's a monster wearing Zed's skin, something without thoughts and feelings and with only one desire in the whole world. Or maybe, as she's thought about over the nights she's been here, maybe this _is _Zed. The real Zed, the real _them_. She could look like this too, if she wants to – just a good few cracks of the Z-band against the wall and she could be free of everything that's ever bound her, everything that makes her life a misery.

But she doesn't. She won't. One day she might, when she finds a way to control herself without it (she's convinced that it's possible, that zombies without Z-bands are more than just monsters). But right now, staring this _thing_ that is only half Zed in the eye, she has never wanted to be a zombie less. Has never felt so afraid of her own people, her friends. Herself.

Zed sighs, his breath fogging the glass for a moment. He looks terrible, eyes red and bloodshot and sunken into his face, his veins stark black against his grey flesh. His hair is still full of dirt from the football field, and from being tackled to the ground by zombie patrol. It's darker than it should be, the green only glimmering through when the light catches it right.

It's kind of awful. Zed's always been the pretty boy of Zombietown, tall and handsome and with a devil-may-care sort of attitude that half the girls in their class at school fawn over (not Eliza though – she just thinks he's kind of an idiot, albeit one she is very fond of). He's light on his feet and the life of a party – he plays every sport known to zombies, he's the first to start dancing at Mash, and he'll spit a verse to any beat Bonzo cares to drop. This zombie is slow and staggering, ugly in the way that humans like to describe zombies when they think the zombies can't hear them. This creature won't spin you a rhyme or drag you out dumpster diving on the edge of Seabrook after dark. It doesn't even know it has a sister, let alone that what she wants most in the world is a dog.

No, the monster is all the wrong parts of Zed, and none of the good ones. There's always been something manic about Zed, something a little too zombie and not enough Z-band. She's thought before that maybe his Z-band isn't set quite right, that the default frequency or strength of the pulses is too low for him, lets too much zombie through. He's too reckless, and has no regard for his own safety when he's fixed on an idea – and when he's decided on something, he's just a little bit too obsessive. She'd be lying if she said that she had never thought about adjusting his band, just to see what would happen, if her theories were correct. She'd sat there before, late at night, and mulled it over, wondering if taking the edge off would change who he was. But she'd never done it, not like the humans had done now, taking his Z-band away completely. She never _would_, because she has a conscience, and a sense of what is right and what is fundamentally _inhumane_.

Yeah, she's still pretty angry at the humans. That wasn't going to change any time soon.

Zed growls at her, a low and guttural sound she can only just hear through the thick glass. It sounds like his throat might rip itself apart. It's no kind of human sound…but it's not a zombie noise either. It's not angry enough, there's no longing in it. If anything, it reminds her of the way he would call for her and Bonzo if he was across the street from them on a quiet morning. Curious, she takes a step closer to the window.

Zed stares at her. His eyes are the same as they were yesterday, bloodshot and starey and slightly squinted, like he's in pain. Today though, they are focused directly on her, not some random middle distance she can't see. It would be kind of creepy if it wasn't such unusual behaviour for a mindless zombie.

She's holding her breath, she realises, but she doesn't let it go. Is he…here? Aware of his surroundings, of something other than the firing pins of the brains of the humans that occasionally come through? Does he recognise her? There's no real way to tell – all he does is stare, unblinking. Eliza bites her lip and thinks about it for a moment.

She lifts a hand, and waves.

For the longest time, he doesn't move, just stares at her blankly. There's nothing in his face, no recognition, no sign that he understood the basic social cue. She lets out her breath and goes to turn away, trying not to be disappointed.

He makes the noise again, the one that sounds like he's calling to her. And then, slowly, his arm visibly shaking, he lifts his hand and waves in return.

She hasn't seen his hands since they came here, not properly, hasn't been able to get a look at the rashy burn that had been slowly spreading up his arm for the last four months. Even before that, he'd been all cagey about it for _weeks_ now, hiding it from her like she might not notice him wincing in pain every time he moves the wrong way. Now, just by luck, he lifts the arm that is supposed to be shackled by a Z-band, and she gets as clear a view of it as she could have asked for.

It's…bad. His arm is still red and raw, though it looks like the humans have attempted to clean it up, to help it start healing. She hadn't realised just how far it had gotten, but it reaches all the way up his arm and disappears under the sleeve of his shirt. And where his Z-band would usually sit is rubbed raw, open sores glaring at her from around his wrist.

She stares, and wonders if it is all from her hack, or if some of this is from before that. It's a running joke between the three of them that Zed's Z-band is always broken, because it is – every time he gets it fixed or replaced, two days later the screen will have been smashed by a football, or part of the lock has split from hitting the floor during a zombie mash, or he's jiggled the wiring loose doing whatever the hell it is that he does when she's not around, and now every now and then it gives him a proper zap that's more electro than magnetic.

It's part of the reason that they'd taken it away when they brought him here, that they'd let him go back to zombie and left him there for so many days. Hers and Bonzo's Z-bands had rebooted easily, only turned off for those few awful minutes when the Aceys had been in control, but Zed's had been utterly destroyed, had just glitched out and switched itself off again every time they'd tried until they gave up and wrenched it off his arm, to replace when they had the time.

She'd thought, at the time, that it was just worn out from all the times they'd overridden the programming to keep Zed unstable enough to play football. It was hard work for a little thing like that, to override every failsafe and fallback the band had to keep zombies online and allow its charge to stay in that grey area between life and undeath. She'd thought he'd just fried it doing that, that the Aceys turning it off had just been the last straw for the poor thing. But now, looking at his arm, she remembers the little green monster that had come up on her own screen, and she wonders…

He makes another noise, a question. "What did you do?" she asks and points to his wrist, to the big, open wounds that sit in place of the Z-band he should be wearing. She can feel her own pressed against her skin, warm from her body heat. She wonders if she has any scars underneath it, on that part of herself that she's never seen.

His eyes trace from her, to his wrist, and back again. She's not sure he's understood the question, but she waits patiently. Slowly, he lifts his other hand, and places his forefinger on the burnt and broken flesh.

He drags it across his wrist, to the right.

"Oh my god," she whispers, and steps back from the window – and she'd known it all along, really, but she'd been trying to tell herself that there was no way he was dumb enough, no way Zed would do that to himself – to _them. _"You swiped right. That's why the software corrupted. That's how they hacked into my computer." The zombie stares at her, uncomprehending. "I'm going to _kill_ you when we get out of here!" And maybe there is a little bit of zombie still coursing through her veins, because she punches the glass, hard enough that she almost splits her knuckles open.

Zed flinches and stumbles backwards, like he's been stung. For a few seconds, he stares at his hands. And then he starts walking again, around and around and around in endless, mindless circles.

Eliza sits down on her bed, her hands curled into fists, and waits for it to be over.

**A/N: **Thankyou for reading! Feel free to check me out on tumblr as zombiedadjokes or apocalyvse, and on AO3 as apocalyvse! This will be a four-part series. Please remember to leave a review if you enjoyed it, or if you have any suggestions on what I should write next!


	2. PART 2

On the morning of their fifth day in containment, just before breakfast, they bring back Zed's Z-band.

Well, they bring him a shiny new one, with reinforced casing and double-tight locks. New software too, probably, Eliza muses as she watches them corner her friend like a wild animal. They've brough big shields and protective gear, but it's all nothing. Zed is all bark and no bite – he is in control now, by some unknown miracle. Or maybe he is just spent and defeated, worn down by days and nights of restless activity in his tiny grey cell.

They shock him twice before he'll come to his senses, two pulses of something a little sharper than what the average Z-band is handing out. It's a brave man that grabs his arm ten seconds later (a cowardly man counts the seconds aloud, standing back by the door where he can be the first to escape. Eliza wonders if he would lock it behind him, never mind the five people he would leave behind). The brave one works quickly and efficiently, snapping the Z-band around Zed's wrist and leaping back to safety right on the twelve second marker. It takes five more for the band to turn on and resume its duties.

In twenty seven seconds, Zed comes back, shaking and gasping for air, groping blindly for the frame of the bed to stop himself from falling over. The count stops there. The humans retreat.

"_What is – what-?"_ he asks in Zombietongue, struggling to spit out the most basic of syllables, and stares at the Zombie Patrol officers in alarm. "_Where am I?"_

Most of them don't understand, of course – why would Zombie Patrol bother to speak Zombietongue? One prods him with the end of a taser that looks more like a cattle prod, and snaps at him to, "Speak English!" The one next to her rolls his eyes, and sets a hand on the long stick in her grasp.

"_You are in…Containment,_" he says in their native tongue, struggling with the shapes of the words and their derogatory word for Zombie Containment, which more accurately translates to _prison_. "_For damaging your Z-band, and for going offline in a human-zoned area. Can you speak English?_"

Zed frowns, his face scrunched up in effort. "N-not…me," he manages to spit out, his throat raw and his tongue too still to make the syllables. English is naturally very hard for Zombies, especially back when Z-bands were first invented. That was why they had Zombietongue, and why it requires fewer words to get a point across, and less sounds for a tongue to get confused by. It was easier for the stiff mouths of the first 'humanised' zombies to speak.

It's cruel of them, really, to expect Zed to speak to them in English, a language that is already complicated, when they have left him a full zombie for the better part of a week. It will take hours for the Z-band to make its adjustments, to rewire his brain and teach his body to relax again. It might take days for him to remember what happened, if he ever will. She doesn't know what it's like for someone to spend a few days without a Z-band. She only knows the stories from the outbreak, what it was like for the first zombies to return to humanity after _years_ of being what they were.

Well, humanity. That was offensive – they had never returned to being human, not once they'd been shunned to their side of the wall once and for all. They'd become something new, started working on whatever it is they are today. But…no, she's getting caught up in the technicalities. They are zombies. No one knows enough about their condition to know what Zed will be like in a few hours, days, weeks. No one that _should_ know the answers cares enough to find out in a way that doesn't break the ethics of science, and Zed may have put all their lives in danger, but he doesn't deserve to be a lab rat.

She looks over at Bonzo. He is huddled in a corner, hands over his head, scared that the humans might come for him next. Her heart aches, and she longs to go over there and comfort him, but there's nothing she can do. She slumps back onto her bed and returns to her week-long study of the ceiling, trying not to listen to the stupid humans next door.

ooo

Zed tries.

She listens all day as he struggles against the limitations of his own body, the post-zombie weakness that makes his limps shake and his throat tight, that would be draining all his energy before he could even realise he's tired. She tries to watch him too, for a little while, half-hoping this indomitable will he seems to have found will push him through the worst of it – and then, as the day wears on, she stands at the window and wishes he would realise that if he only stopped and let his body catch up for a minute, he would probably get further faster.

Zed ignores her until she gives up on watching him completely and slumps back on her bed. Even then, she can still hear him occasionally, struggling on and on to form one word, to walk the four steps across his cell without a limp or a drag, or collapsing entirely. He works himself to the bone, for so long that she almost learns to ignore him in kind – except that she _can't_, because even though she's unexplainably angry at him, she's still worried about him.

When it goes quiet, she gets up and peers through the window. He is face-down on the bed, arms cushioning his head. She's not entirely sure if he's asleep or having some sort of meltdown over his inability to walk and talk, but she can't do anything, just like she couldn't do anything for Bonzo. She sits back down, and waits.

ooo

Somewhere in the middle of day six, a human opens the door and tells her they are taking her home.

"We're going home?" Eliza questions, barely able to believe it.

"Yes," the woman confirms. "Technically, you are classified as minors, and your case has been dropped, so you're free to leave."

_Technically_, Eliza thinks to herself and almost laughs. "We _are _minors," she points out as she steps through the door. "Just like every other kid in Seabrook."

"You're _zombies_," the woman replies, with an expression that says she's not interested in anything Eliza has to say. Eliza feels the urge to throw something down the hall.

"_Elizika!_"

Bonzo tackles her from the right, hugging her so tight that he almost lifts her off the ground. Laughing, she wriggles around in his grip so that she can hug him back, and buries her face in the front of his coveralls. This is what she's been missing. There's nothing like a Bonzo hug, even when he's just about squeezing the life out of you, and at the end of the worst week of her life, it's just the sort of comfort she needs.

"What…about…me…Bonz-?" Zed struggles to speak somewhere ahead of her, and Bonzo lets go, whipping around to find their other friend, their missing piece. He's still by the door to his cell, swaying uncertainly with a hand pressed against the wall. He doesn't look like himself, even now, but he's smiling, and when Bonzo wraps his arms around him, he doesn't argue.

Eliza is decidedly cooler. She waits with crossed arms while they hug and assure each other that they are safe, they are okay. Bonzo hugs Zed again, and then slings one of his arms around his shoulders and helps him stumble the last few steps between the door and her.

She looks him up and down. It's clear in his face, in the bright spark that has returned to his eyes, that he is hoping she will greet him like she normally would, that she will forgive him and act like he hadn't risked all their lives and everything they've worked for. "You look terrible," is all she says though, in a voice that isn't particularly friendly.

His face drops. "I've been – zombie-" he struggles out, then frowns at the way half his words disappear before he can speak them.

"I know," she says. "Doesn't mean I forgive you."

"Eliza-" he begins, and she's pretty sure that he wants to apologise, but the frustration of it, the regret in his voice, fills up his throat and the words just don't seem to come out, no matter how hard he tries. It's hard to relax, Eliza guesses, when you're coming down from a five-day zombie high and your best friend wants nothing to do with you (she feels kind of bad then, because it occurs to her that there's a distinct possibility he doesn't even remember what he did to anger her – but then her pride gets in the way, and she decides she can't soften now, not when he hasn't admitted he was wrong).

"_Elizika_," Bonzo says softly, drawing her attention. "_Not Zed's fault_."

"Isn't it?" she asks, and turns a pointed glare towards Zed. Behind her, the Zombie Patrol officer sighs loudly and pokes her in the shoulder with the blunt end of a baton.

"That's enough," the woman says. "Down the hall, zombies, before I change my mind."

"_Elizika_," Zed says, one final attempt at gaining her favour. The baton taps her shoulder again, two hard raps against the flat of her shoulder blade.

"_Grugze, Zebala," _she snaps and then turns and walks away, not caring if Bonzo is actually able to carry him out of the building or not.

She waits alone in the back of a truck for them, staring at the wall opposite her. Fuming. She's angry at Zed, for what he's done, and she's angry at the humans for what they're doing – blaming zombies for something _humans_ are ultimately responsible for, poking and prodding them like bears in a cage. And she's mad at herself, for always going along with whatever stupid idea Zed brings her, for letting herself be convinced that he's going to change things and this time he definitely won't mess it up. For sitting back and waiting around for someone else to do the work again, when she's known all along that protests and rebelling against the system, open demonstrations of their frustrations with the zombie way of life, is the only thing that will make the humans treat them fairly once and for all.

The boys come eventually; Bonzo helps Zed into a seat a safe distance from her, and then sits himself across from her. They sit in silence the whole ride home, except from the odd noise from Zed as he tries to clear his throat and find his voice again. As they reach Zombietown proper, he starts a conversation with Bonzo, his voice getting stronger with every sentence he drags out. Eliza pointedly ignores whatever they are talking about.

It's a relief when the doors are opened and they step out into the weak sunshine of a cloud-ridden afternoon. Eliza stands in the street and stretches, drinking in the sunshine and the slight chill of the breeze that rattles the roof of a nearby house. Just down the street, there is movement at her own house as her mum comes out – she doesn't go much past the front step, wary of the Zombie Containment officers around them, but she is there. She is waiting. Eliza longs to go to her.

"Sweet, Eliza, they have wifi now!"

She turns around to find Zed showing her his Z-band, and the display with all of its new capabilities. His speech is miles better now that he's had some time to warm up into it, and someone to talk to other than himself, and he's walking on his own – though he's got a stiffness to his stride that isn't usually there, and a draggy foot worse than hers ever has been.

The fact that he's speaking to her like this is any old conversation stokes the fire in her gut again. She wants him to be unhappy for a little while longer yet. To actually _regret_ the things he's done and the consequences of them.

But he's her friend, and she shouldn't wish pain upon her friends, so she bites back about her revolution and then walks away before she can say anything she'll regret. She runs to her mum, to be enveloped in her worried arms, and then she lets herself be escorted inside, without a single glance back to let Zed know she cares.

ooo

**A/N:** Thankyou for reading! Please leave a review if you made it this far. Find me on tumblr zombiedadjokes :)


	3. PART 3

He's lucky Eliza is wide awake when he climbs through her open window, on the second storey of her house, because she'd probably punch him if she woke up to him standing over her in the middle of the night. As it is, she just sits up and glares at him as he clambers awkwardly through the window and sits himself on the windowsill, half-perched like he's ready to flee if she starts throwing things at him.

She thinks about it, but it took her a week to fix her bedside lamp and he's not worth breaking it over.

"What are you doing?" she asks instead, her voice carefully neutral.

Zed looks around blankly. "I came to talk?" he replies, like climbing through her window at midnight is a perfectly reasonable way to contact her.

"Did you run out of rocks in the garden?" she snipes. That's how he would usually get her attention – stand down there amongst the chairs her mum has stacked into a fence and pelt the window with pebbles until she woke up or he got bored and went about his midnight business alone. Scaling the porch was…extreme, even for a boy who is known for bouncing off concrete floors like they're trampolines.

"No. I just didn't want you to ignore me." He leans forward and folds his hands in front of him, elbows resting on his knees.

Eliza lets out an angry huff and flops backwards onto her bed. "I don't want to talk to you, Zed," she tells him frankly, and then, realising how abrupt she's being, adds, "I'm glad you're okay, and that we're home, but I'm not interested in talking to you, or listening to any of your stupid ideas right now."

There's a pause. "You're angry with me," he says eventually, like he's just now discovering this.

Eliza grits her teeth. "Yeah Zed, I am."

"Why?" he asks, and it takes everything in her power not to throw the lamp at him anyway.

She doesn't throw it. Instead, she switches it on and then sits up slowly, studying him under its soft golden light.

"I know what you did," she tells him, her voice hard as the steel beams of the old power plant.

His eyes go wide with surprise – or guilt. "What?" he says, just a little too quickly, curling away from her like he's got something to hide. "I didn't do anything, why would you think-"

"You swiped right, Zed."

The room falls silent. For once, Zed Necrodopoulis has nothing to say.

"Why'd you do it, Zed?" Eliza asks, and spreads her hands wide in a helpless gesture. "Of all the dumb, stupid, deadbrained things to do…I told you so many times not to do it! How many times did I say _never swipe right_? I told you what would happen! And you just went and-"

"I needed to look human," Zed mumbles to the floorboards, his words almost lost in the dust and the mould that creeps around their edges. "Just for half an hour. I didn't think-"

"_Why_ would you need to look human? Everything was going _perfectly_, people _wanted_ us around – what was so important that you couldn't just…be _you_?"

He ducks his head, leaning so far forward in his study of the floor that he's teetering on the edge of her windowsill, about to fall forward. His shoulders hunch unhappily and his hands clench together, like he wants to lie to her again but he's realised that would be a bad idea. Or maybe he will run away, if he can't bear the tense silence that follows. Eliza waits for him to break, either one way or the other.

"Addison's parents," he mumbles eventually, like he's ashamed of himself. "They wouldn't let her cheer unless I met them."

"You couldn't do that as a zombie?"

He lifts his head, his eyes wide in horror. "No!" he replies. "They didn't know I'm a zombie. And they _hate_ zombies, they never would have-"

Eliza stares at him, aghast. "You risked our _lives_ to sell a lie to a couple of dumb humans who can't accept anyone different than them?"

"And I took Addison on a date to that icecream place," he blurts out before he can stop himself, and then grimaces at his own stupidity.

Eliza feels like she can't breathe.

"You're _so_ stupid, Zed," she tells him, so angry that her voice is shaking and breathy, the words hard to get out. Tears prick the corners of her eyes, and she blinks them away, hiding her shaking hands in her lap. "You do all of this just for one stupid cheerleader-"

"Hey!" he straightens like he's been shot. "Don't call Addison stupid, this has nothing to do with her."

"It's got everything to do with her!" Eliza bursts out, loud enough to wake the whole street, and rockets to her feet. For the first time in her life, she towers over Zed, her gaze angry enough to burn right through him. "If you hadn't been trying to make her parents happy – to make _her _happy, none of this would have happened! Being unstable was already hurting you, idiot, did you think trying to be human would be fine? You think there's no reason why we don't just look _like that_ normally? You _literally_ could have died! For one stupid girl who, what, couldn't tell her parents she wants to date a zombie? Can't _accept_ that you're a zombie?"

"Eliza," Zed tries, but he's on the back foot and his voice is weak and unsteady. "That's not how it happe-"

"I _don't care_ why it happened," she informs him. She's actually yelling now, she's so furious, she realises as she says it, but she makes no effort to stop. If her parents have heard, they're wise enough not to come and interrupt.

"How long did you think that would last, anyway?" she asks next, when Zed has nothing to say for himself. "How long were you going to pretend to be human before you told them the truth? A couple of weeks? A couple of _months_?" She waits, eyebrows raised, but Zed just shakes his head. "Until the Z-band killed you?"

"I don't know!" he snaps. "I didn't think about it like that. I just wanted them to like me, I just…" He swallows hard, like there's a stone stuck in his throat. "I just wanted to be something other than a zombie. Just for half an hour."

Eliza's shaking, from head to toe, and gasping for one deep breath that she just can't catch. Zed won't look at her, and part of her, the vindictive part, is glad he's ashamed of what he's said and what he's done, his abandonment of zombie values for the bright lure of humanity. The other part of her is sad, that of all the things she's seen people try to thrust upon Zed over the years, self-hatred is the one that has stuck – and she hadn't even noticed until he spelled it out for her.

She finds a breath and pulls it into her lungs, letting the air rattle in and out of her ribcage. Her head spins. She blinks, and she is sitting on the edge of her bed again. Zed is avoiding her eyes even though they are so close that their knees almost touch; even though they have been yelling in each other's faces for five minutes or more. Silence stretches out between them, and somehow it is more deafening than the screaming of before.

"Was it worth it?" Eliza forces out through clenched teeth, considerably quieter.

There's a pause, and then Zed tells her, "The ice cream at that place was as good as I told you it would be."

Normally she would laugh and then tell him to stop being stupid, but it's not a time for laughter. Instead, she glares at him. "Get out of my house," she tells him, and shifts like she's planning to throw him out the window.

He raises his hands in surrender, curling away from her. "I don't know, Eliza! I can't even – I don't even know what day it is. And I think I broke up with Addison at the game, but I don't…" He stops, looks around like something in her room might help him, and then sucks in a deep breath. "Do you…_remember_ everything?" he asks. "Is it weird if-"

"It's Friday," Eliza informs him, cutting him off just before the panic starts to rise in his voice. "And if you ever listened in school, you would know that the first zombies didn't remember anything from before their Z-bands, so it's probably normal to be…missing stuff."

"But-" His hands twist together in his lap and when their eyes meet, his are wide and worried. "I was a zombie for five minutes and I can't remember the whole week? Or the football game. Why wouldn't I-"

"No." Eliza shakes her head. For the first time this evening, she feels compelled to reach out to him, to place one calm hand over his shiny new Z-band, the edges of her fingers just brushing his skin. His hands pause in their jittering. "You don't remember _anything _from containment? Nothing at all?"

"Did something bad happen?" he asks, and there's not much of a pallor to a zombie's complexion to start with, but his face drains of any colour it might have had at the possibilities, the unknowing of where he has been and what he has done.

"No," she hurries to assure him, before he faints or throws up or something. Under her hand, his arms tremble in fear and confusion, a tiny movement he cannot control. "Just…" There's no easy way to tell him. "They took your Z-band away when we got there, Zed. You've been a zombie for five days."

It's Zed's turn to stop breathing. He sways on the edge of the windowsill and her hand curls around his wrist just in case he falls. "Five days," he echoes, and she nods mutely. He laughs, a breathy, rasping noise that contains no humour.

"Did we win the game?" and of course football is the first thing on his mind. She's just glad he doesn't ask about Addison. She doesn't remember anything past the end of the game herself, much less what happened to the cheerleader.

She _does _remember the end of the game though. "We won," she assures him. "In the last three seconds, you won the game. Then your Z-band turned off, and…I think you went after Bucky? I don't know. Mine and Bonzo's turned off as well."

"Bucky?" Zed screws his face up in horror. "I think…did I…" She's worried he might say _eat him_, just because the thought of it and how close he'd come makes her stomach churn, but he just takes a deep breath and says, "I think…I think I stopped? Like, on purpose?"

Eliza lets go of his wrist, and leans back so that she can properly stare at him. "Stopped yourself?" she repeats, like she hasn't understood, but it's more of an automatic response than actual confusion. She's busy thinking, a hundred miles an hour, remembering Zed in containment, the zombie that had waved at her. Once was a coincidence, sure, but twice?

"I remember," he says. "I was – I _wanted _something - and then…I stopped myself. I thought I made it up. Is that even _possible_?"

"Zed," Eliza says slowly. "Are you sure you don't remember _anything_ from containment? Anything at all?"

Zed shrugs. "Not really. Maybe a few things, but nothing solid. Nothing _real_."

"You recognised me," she tells him slowly. "Only once, a couple of days ago, but…you _waved_ at me Zed, and when I asked you how this happened, you told me you swiped right." She gestures to his wrist, where the wounds are still healing over. The Z-band is still missing, moved to his right arm while the left heals.

"I don't remember," Zed tells her, and runs a hand through his hair. He sounds tired, defeated – desperate to reach a memory he just doesn't have. "Are you sure? I didn't think we could…I mean, a full zombie is supposed to have no control. That's why we have Z-bands."

"Maybe it's like I've always said," she suggests, and it's hard to hide the enthusiasm in her voice. "Zombies can learn to control themselves without a Z-band."

Zed pulls a face. "Eliza," he says, the colour returning slowly to his voice. "That's just a myth, there's no proof that-"

"But there _is _proof!" she replies, right over the top of him. "_You're _the proof!"

"_Am_ I? We don't even know what happened to me, Eliza. And I don't remember-"

"So? We could try it again. I bet I can still hack these new Z-bands – if we just go somewhere quiet, I could turn it off, we can see what happens-"

"What? No, Eliza, that's crazy, we can't just…_zombie out_. What if the Z-Patrol come? You _just_ yelled at me for messing with my Z-band, and now you _want_ me to do it?"

Eliza sits back and thinks about it. Her eyes rove around the room and land on the broken speaker that's sitting in the corner behind the door. She'd brought it home after a Mash a month or so ago, intending to fix it, but since then she'd just been too busy.

"We should use the Mash space," she says, and turns back to Zed. "Zombie Patrol won't notice just two of us down there. And even if I can't turn your Z-band back on – which _won't _happen anyway – there's no way you'll be able to climb out of there while you're all zombie."

She waits, expecting him to say yes – Zed _always _says yes, even to the dumbest ideas she's ever had the pleasure of hearing. But he is hesitant, his hands wringing together nervously.

"I don't want to lose control again, Eliza," he tells her quietly. "I can't remember anything I did, and I don't want to – I don't know if I _can _control it."

"You'll _never_ know if you don't try," Eliza points out. "You did it Zed, I _swear_ – I _watched _you answer my questions. Just one try."

There's a pause while he thinks about it. "Will you forgive me if I do it?" he asks.

Eliza smiles. "Of course," she promises. And really, now that she's had the chance to scream at him, she's almost forgiven him already, like she always does – but now there's a question in her mind, an itch she can't scratch, and Zed is the answer. And yeah, maybe she's being a _little_ manipulative – but he'd manipulated her into giving him the hack in the first place, and she'd ended up in containment for that.

"And you'll be in control? No matter what?" he presses.

She scoffs. "Zed," she says pointedly. "When do my hacks _ever_ fail?" He shrugs and looks down at his feet, like he's still unsure. "Tomorrow night?" she presses – and she'd go for tonight, before he has time to think up a way to worm out of it, but she's dead tired and after all this noise, her mum is _definitely_ awake – no sneaking out of the house after this.

He huffs an unhappy breath. "Okay," he agrees half-heartedly, and stands, climbing back through the window. "Tomorrow. One try"

"Good night, Zed," she says in his wake, but it's to an empty room and an open window, Zed already escaping into the dark of the night.

The basement they use for Zombie Mash is dark and cold in the night, devoid of all life except the skittering of rats disappearing into the building's underbelly at the mention of their presence. They climb down into the basement through one of the narrow, winding tunnels that they usually use to escape Zombie Patrol on raid nights, and follow the wall around to the big switch that controls the lights.

The place looks big and shadowy without the crowd of a Mash to fill in its corners, to shake the floors and rattle the walls with the force of their feet and their voices. To the left, the light slowly makes its way down the hall and into the long strings of bulbs that illuminate the light garden. Eliza shuts and locks the door before it is fully alight, confining them to the main room and the big, open dance floor.

Zed stays down there, standing in the centre of the floor and watching as she climbs up to the rusted catwalk that criss-crosses the floor from above, far out of reach of clawing zombie hands. She settles herself in Bonzo's music booth, laptop set on the centre of his desk. She's spent the day running through the hack, picking apart the new Z-band programming they'd been given (_no more adjusting them_, she'd heard someone lamenting at some stage, but that was untrue; it's barely a new system, just patches on the old one and a few new tricks).

"Ready?" she calls down to Zed, her finger resting on the key that controls his Z-band. He frowns up at her, shifting from foot to foot. He's nervous; afraid of everything he's capable of, even in an environment like this. Maybe this time, he's thinking twice about placing his life into her hands – except this time, _she's_ the one who came asking for it, rather than him begging her to take it.

"If you smell smoke, stop, drop, and roll," Zed jokes weakly, and fiddles with his Z-band.

Eliza doesn't laugh. "Are you ready, though?" she asks again, insistent. She could swear she sees him roll his eyes.

"Yeah," he says, in a voice that's supposed to be convincing but is not, and bounces on his toes. "Let's do this."

Eliza doubts he's actually ready – she doubts they should be doing this at all, now that the initial excitement and curiousity of it has worn off – but she presses the key anyway, and listens as her computer beeps in acknowledgement of the command. And then, she watches.

She watches as Zed goes very still.

As his shoulders hunch, and his body twists, like it wants to turn itself inside out.

As his veins blacken and his eyes turn bloodshot, his skin cold and pale, his fingers curled.

As his lungs pull in a great big breath of air, and let out a bellow, the angry sound of a zombie devoid of a meal.

The hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A shiver runs down her spine. But this is her idea, her experiment, and she's promised not to let him lose control, so she doesn't hide. Instead, she leans out over the edge of Bonzo's space, far enough that the zombie will be able to see her.

"Zed?" she calls experimentally. Bloodshot eyes turn upwards, black veins bulging from his face. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, his tongue paralysed by the mutation.

"Can you hear me?" she asks. "Are you…there?" He stares at her, blank-faced. And then, painfully slow, he nods.

Eliza's breath catches in her throat, a thrill of excitement rising in her chest. It _works._ She has no idea what Zed has done, how he has achieved it, but he has managed the impossible. It occurs to her that she is one of the first people to ever see this; to look down upon a zombie who is in complete control of himself, able to reach beyond the constant hunger that haunts their kind, and become something _more_.

He is able to fight past the physical mutation too, she notices, as he rulls his shoulders and paces a few steps to and fro. His stride is loose and even, and his shoulders slump back into place when he decides he feels comfortable, none of the stiff stumbling a zombie usually suffers present. She's got worse problems moving her own feet some days than Zed does as a full zombie; it's kind of annoying, actually. Just her kind of luck.

He wanders away from her, expanding the space in the room that he's allowing himself. As he reaches one of the concrete pillars that hold up the basement, she notices his hand, clenching and unclenching into a fist at his side. "Zed?" she calls experimentally. He twitches, but doesn't turn around this time. She reaches for her keyboard, for the command that will bring him back to life.

There's a scratching from the side of the room, a squeak and the clatter of something toppling over, and then a rat bursts from the shadows in a mad dash for the far side of the room. Zed whips around, his eyes following it as it passes under the lights, and his whole body tenses and stiffens, as if he's about to pounce.

Eliza swears loudly and hits the key that will restore power to his Z-band.

He comes back gasping and clutching at his wrist, his back pressed against the pillar. He's still staring at the spot of darkness where the rat had disappeared, eyes wide and unfocused.

Eliza grabs her laptop and climbs down swiftly, reaching him in record time. "Hey," she says, and tugs at the sleeve of his jacket, the one that covers his injured arm. "You okay?"

"That was…" he says, and then stops to draw in another breath. "That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."

"You weren't going to eat that rat, were you?" Eliza deadpans, only half joking. The way he's looked at it as it ran past… There were older zombies still who were known around town for eating whatever unfortunate creatures they manage to catch – not large animals, usually, but small fry like rats were a popular choice. _Too zombie_, Eliza's always thought at the sight of them clutching struggling rats and mice and frogs and god-knows-what else. She's never seen Zed even look sideways at a rat until today.

She hopes it isn't a quirk that catches on.

Zed is shaking his head before she's even finished asking though, faintly disgusted at the thought of it. "I was just watching it," he claims. Eliza decides to believe him without further question. "It's weird, Eliza, it's like…everything is _more._ That thing falling over sounded like a gunshot, and the lights hurt my eyes, and-"

"Can you see in the dark now?" Eliza jokes and circles around so that she can see the read-out on his Z-band. "X-ray vision? Do you think you could fly?" The bracelet reads _ONLINE_, and inwardly, she breathes a sigh of relief – she hasn't broken it, hasn't irreparably corrupted it. She's kept him safe, just like she'd said she would.

"The shadows were pitch black," Zed tells her, and chooses to ignore her other, stupid comments. He's still wide-eyed and starey, still rattled from the experience. "Like I was blind. I couldn't see anything over there." He gestures to the side of the room, where the rat had come from, and then looks back to the shadows on the other side, where the rat had gone.

Eliza swallows down her good humour at having achieved what they did. "Want to go home?" she asks instead of trying to jibe him into laughing. He rubs his wrist around the Z-band again and nods.

Silence stretches between them as they turn off the lights and hoist themselves up into the nearest tunnel, well-practised at finding their way out of the basement in the dark. The first thing the Patrol always do on raid nights is cut the power. The second thing they do is grab the slowest zombies out of the room, with tasers or hands or a boot to the stomach. This is how you stay out of their hands; by practising all the ways out until you know them just by feel.

Eliza doesn't like how quiet Zed is being, how he lets the air fill with the soft scuff of their boots in the dirt and their fingers trailing along the wall. It is too tense and too drawn out, and there are too many things they haven't said about what they've just done.

"Are you ready for school on Monday?" she asks just to break it, aware that if she tries to talk about anything she really _wants_ to talk about, he won't give her any answer. Even now, he is cagey and reluctant, his boots skipping a beat somewhere ahead of her.

"Surprised they'll even let us go back to school," he replies in a voice that is carefully neutral. "I'll never get to play football again."

"At least you'll get to see Addison?" Eliza suggests, trying to stay upbeat.

There's a long pause, and then Zed tells her, "Let's just go home, Eliza."

They walk the rest of the way in silence.


End file.
